[R] read.table and factors

[Greg Snow]

Yes, just set the colClasses argument to read.table (this will also tend to speed up the reading, though only noticeable for really big files).

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Erin Hodgess
> Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 12:40 PM
> To: R help
> Subject: [R] read.table and factors
> 
> Dear R People:
> 
> Suppose I have the following in a file:
> 
> 1 1.171504 1.010070
> 2 -0.9317064 1.860900
> 3 -0.06522837 0.6561147
> 4 -1.817026 0.02619137
> 5 1.426983 0.5995691
> 6 -0.2844911 1.155561
> 7 -0.6920972 0.7633124
> 8 0.3129615 5.121108
> 
> I want to use read.table to bring it in and I want the first column to
> be a factor.  Is there a way to set up read.table such that the first
> column is a factor and the others are numeric, please?
> 
> Thanks,
> Erin
> 
> 
> --
> Erin Hodgess
> Associate Professor
> Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
> University of Houston - Downtown
> mailto: erinm.hodgess at gmail.com
> 
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